It took me a little over a week to read The Hero of Ages and then another 4 days before I've sat down to write about it. Even now I'm struggling to write anything. I'm not entirely sure why that is, but it is at least partly down to how big the story was in terms of detail and plot.
The Hero of Ages is the final book in the Mistborn trilogy and starts a year on from where The Well of Ascension finishes. The story is split over several locations, generally switching between each city at the end of a chapter. Sometimes this was a little frustrating as I wanted to keep reading about a particular place, but it meant that the stories ran in roughly the right time and gave more perspective on events. It did make me confused occasionally though, as I kept forgetting the names of the cities and had to rely on which characters were there to work it all out.
I really enjoyed the storyline, which is saying a lot as this book has one of my least favourite 'types' of ending. But it was done so well and it felt so right that it very much added to my experience of the book rather than spoiling it. The way that everything from the three books came together made for a very interesting read, and it wasn't just the big storylines from the earlier books that made a difference.
One thing that I always appreciate in books and films is when a seemingly innocuous comment or event turns out to have great significance. The Hero of Ages has a plot of its own, but many events and discoveries actually serve the purpose of explaining earlier events, or helping you to view them from a different perspective. Combining the explanations with the off-hand mentions makes for very powerful narrative. At one stage I actually commented to my husband that I really enjoyed the random little comments that were being made about something. Somehow he managed not to react, as a few chapters later it turned out not to be such a random comment after all.
As with the earlier books, each chapter starts with a segment from a book written in the Final Empire, this time written by the Hero of Ages. The segments serve to sum up events that have happened and fill in the gaps in acquired knowledge. I actually want to re-read the chapter starters now that I know what happens so that I can really appreciate the careful selection of words.
I couldn't really say what my favourite part of the book was. The character chemistry was again really good, and seeing how they all dealt with stress in different ways was interesting. And of course I loved the way that everything was important. I think that there are probably small parts of individual elements that I would say I wasn't so keen on, but everything fits together so well to form a clever and engaging story that I couldn't rate one thing higher than another.
It's very rare that I leave a fantasy world behind satisfied about loose ends having been tied up and the way in which it was done, but it has happened here. I hope to read the books again some time so that I can fully appreciate the way that the characters and plots develop. Of course with the current length of my 'to read' list it there might not be an opening for a while. Some books are just worth making the effort for though.
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